Grand Prix Lyon 2012

Jund Jolts Jeremy to the Top

November 3-4, 2012

Grand Prix Lyon 2012

France, for the last couple of years, had Raphael Levy as its standalone bastion at the Grand Prix circuit. This weekend, he was flanked by his fellow Hall of Famers Gabriel Nassif and Olivier Ruel. For much of the day, it looked like both of these past masters of the game would make it to the final eight. In the end, Nassif was halted, but Ruel added a record 27th (!) Grand Prix Top 8 to his resume.

The rest of France also stepped up its game, with fully half of the Top 8 stocked with home talent. The final few matches were fought with tension and excitement, but in the end it was Jeremy Dezany who claimed the victory for France.

Modern proved to be a ton of fun and ultra-versatile, with enough archetypes running around the top tables to keep the most ardent deck tinkerer happy for weeks. Every color in Magic was there in the finals, but in the end the Black, Red and Green triumphed over the Blue and White.

pairings, results, standings

Saturday, 6:32 p.m. - Matchup Madness

by Frank Karsten

Over 1000 matches of Modern have been played here in Lyon today. That provides a lot of raw data that an analytical crusader such as myself loves to sink his teeth in. On my flight to Lyon, I had prepared a spreadsheet that could automatically combine the metagame classification with the match results. (The metagame classification is a collection of rows stating "Gabriel Nassif: Affinity", "Olivier Ruel: Storm", etc., which I compiled this morning. A match result is, e.g., "Olivier Ruel defeats Gabriel Nassif in Round 13". By translating that to "Storm defeats Affinity" and adding up all of those Sunday match results, I could get an overview of how the various matchups panned out.)

Here are the matchup results I found between the five most popular decks today:

Jund

Robots

Infect

UW Mid-range

Birthing Pod

Jund

XXX

17-23 (43%)

16-14 (53%)

13-4 (76%)

8-6 (57%)

Robots

21-17 (57%)

XXX

8-10 (44%)

11-4 (73%)

4-5 (44%)

Infect

14-16 (47%)

10-8 (56%)

XXX

4-7 (36%)

7-2 (78%)

UW Mid-range

4-13 (24%)

4-11 (27%)

7-4 (64%)

XXX

3-2 (60%)

Birthing Pod

6-8 (43%)

5-4 (56%)

2-7 (22%)

2-3 (40%)

XXX

So, Jund played Robots a grand total of 17+23=40 times today, and Robots won 23 of those encounters (i.e., Robots is a 43% favorite in the matchup).

Looking at these numbers, it would appear that UW Mid-range and Birthing Pod are somewhat ill-positioned in the current field.

Olivier, however, failed to draw a second land, and had to discard his next two discard steps. In the meantime, Davide was building up his army of Robots, with double Steel Overseer turning them into respectable threats.

Rest in Peace came down for Davide, meaning that any Pyromancer Ascension or Past in Flames shenanigans from Olivier would be taken out. But Olivier was not planning to win the match with those graveyard-reliant cards. In fact, he had boarded most of them out in anticipation of graveyard hate. His game plan was to make a ton of Goblin tokens with Empty the Warrens.

Olivier summed up the game nicely as follows: "That was the worst mana screw and mana flood of the entire tournament ... in the same game!" Disappointed but another Top 8 appearance richer, he extended his hand and wished his opponent good luck in the semifinals.

What deck are you playing and why did you choose it?
Splinter Twin with Grim Lavamancer. Lavamancer is very good versus all aggro decks, Jund, and creature-based combo decks like Infect, Twin, Affinity. The deck has a high velocity and is immune to Spell Snare since it has no 2-drops.

What was the best card in your deck/sideboard?
Grim Lavamancer/Mizzium Skin.

What was the worst card in your deck/sideboard?

Maindeck was perfect/Duress.

Emanuel Sutor

Age: 26Hometown: Saarbrücken, GermanyOccupation: Student

Previous Magic accomplishments:

Nothing worth mentioning, but since you asked:
two Pro Tour qualifications and one money finish at a Grand Prix.

What deck are you playing and why did you choose it?
Blue-White Angels, because it has a decent Jund match-up , no really bad match-ups in the format, and a lot of play to it. It's kind of like a (better) blue-white Jund deck.

What was the best card in your deck/sideboard?
The flash creatures combined with all the instants making it really hard for opponents to play around everything/no sideboard card in particular. (Blue-white just has really good sideboard cards in general.)

What was the worst card in your deck/sideboard?

I chose my cards very deliberately.

David Colla

Age: 20Hometown: Parma, ItalyOccupation: Shop assistant

Guild:
Selesnya

Previous Magic accomplishments:
Some PTQ Top 8s, day two at Grand Prix Milan.

What deck are you playing and why did you choose it?
Robots, because Mattia Rizzi gave me that the morning of the tournament.

What was the best card in your deck/sideboard?
Arcbound Ravager, he wins on its own.

What was the worst card in your deck/sideboard?

All tournament long, I never boarded in Ethersworn Canonist.

Jonas Köstler

Age: 22Hometown: Fürth, GermanyOccupation: Having the best girlfriend in the world

Guild:
No guild!

Previous Magic accomplishments:
Top 8 at GP Bochum, Barcelona, and Lille. Sixth place at Team Grand Prix San Jose.

What deck are you playing and why did you choose it?
RUGW Pod. I just love to durdle with Birthing Pod.

What was the best card in your deck/sideboard?
Birthing Pod. Not close.

Olivier Ruel

Previous Magic accomplishments:
Lots in the previous decade, a National Top 8 since then.

What deck are you playing and why did you choose it?
Blue-Red Storm, because I couldn't manage a good enough version of my five-color control decks. It's good to play a deck with which you don't get insulted by opponents on Magic Online when you cast Snapcaster Mage and Rest in Peace on the same turn. Less stylish, of course, but probably producing better results.

What was the best card in your deck/sideboard?
I could pretend it's Increasing Vengeance so I didn't just copy but improve the Finkel-Martell deck. In truth, though, it's definitely Empty the Warrens. Actually, the best is probably Manamorphose, but Empty was the best surprise.

What was the worst card in your deck/sideboard?

Shatterstorm, I really wish I had Shattering Spree instead, and at least three of them. Not that Shatterstorm is bad, but Shattering Spree is just better.

Clément Sarton

Age: 31Hometown: Grenoble, FranceOccupation: Industrial engineer

Guild:
Izzet

Previous Magic accomplishments:

P?
ro Tour Kobe 2006, several French Nationals.

What deck are you playing and why did you choose it?
Robots, because I didn't test a lot.

In this all-German quarterfinal, Jonas Köstler was clearly the more experienced player, with three previous Grand Prix Top 8s to Emanuel Sutor's none. Experience may have favored Köstler, but when the players discussed their match-up while pouring over their opponents' deck lists, it appeared Sutor might be at a more tangible advantage in that regard.

Now Sutor had two 3/3s and one 3/4 flier and was beating down hard. Köstler bought time by chumping with his Finks and regrowing that via Eternal Witness. But those were only stop-gap measures, not solutions. Köstler's deck finally gave him those with Zealous Conscripts and his own Restoration Angel, but it was too late. Sutor's Dismember, Snapcaster Mage, and Dismember flashback left the attackers and blockers mismatched enough for Sutor to punch through the final points of damage.

Next, Path to Exile took out Köstler's Angel, clearing the path for Sutor's fliers, which soon were joined by Vendilion Clique. Köstler was forced to try and use Birthing Pod, sacrificing Kitchen Finks, but the top four cards of his library (the limitation imposed by Aven Mindcensor) proved uncooperative. The next attack brought Köstler to 4. He drew his next, possibly last card, thought long and hard, then picked up his cards.

Jonas Köstler 1-2 Emanuel Sutor

Congratulations to Emanuel Sutor for advancing to the semifinals and qualifying for Pro Tour Gatecrash!

A topdecked Liliana from Hautot got rid of the Dark Confidant. After a Treetop Village attack dealt with Liliana, the sole nonland permanent left standing was Hautot's Deathrite Shaman, which started nibbling down Dezani's life total.

Hautot then moved into mana denial mode, with double Spreading Seas taking out Dezani's access to black and red mana. Unable to cast any spells, Dezani could only shake his head and continually pass the turn, while Dark Confidant, Deathrite Shaman, and Vendilion Clique slowly whittled him down to 0 life.

Jeremy Dezani 1 - Mathieu Hautot 1

Jeremy Dezani

Game 3

This game could be summed up as follows: Hautot had the Dark Confidant advantage early on, but got down to a dangerously low life total quickly. Next, two hasty cascading Bloodbraid Elf from Dezani turned the game around. All in all, the red cards had proven to be better than the blue ones in this matchup.